Thoughts on what happend to me today ?

I personally don't care about customer service. For me it's all about selection and ease of shopping, with price playing a small role. I also don't knowingly shop anywhere that uses lists. First off, they tend to favor regular customers, and I find treating some people better than others offensive. Second, they are logistically hard to manage unless you're dealing with a really small volume store.

 

To each our own. I like to have someone I can talk to and request stuff from without being there in person. I don't like to have to take off work and worry about chasing a release down. The guys I deal with at the 2 stores I go to are somewhat passionate about beer also, the reason I choose these 2 locations. I also give these guys some beer that I have gotten when traveling, and I have picked up beer for them when I have been traveling. So that said, I think it pays off and a lot of time they actually notify me when stuff comes in that I wasn't aware of.

 

Someone already asked above, but I don't see an answer: where in PA are you? Not asking you to out the bottle shop, but others may know of options near(er) you.

 

If you want to help to ensure that no one ever gets treated like that again: Tell the manager you're not shopping there any longer and specifically explain that it you've made this decision because of how poorly you were treated.

If you want to keep shopping at the store but need to air out your frustrations to people that may care: Do what you're doing, put up a thread and get responses from similar people, then continue shopping at the store.

If you want to get revenge: Pick up a bottle of something rare and expensive and then "accidentally" drop it on the floor. As you walk by the kid carrying out the mop and bucket chuck a wink at him and say, "Clean up, aisle six."

If you want to be able to have your feelings and experience validated without there being any ill-will between you and the store manager/employees: Tell the manger how much this sucked and how it's hard to justify a 50 mile drive out to a business that has such bad communication. Inform her/him that you want to keep shopping there, but will only do that if they agree to let you know of any lists that exist for any beers that you're asking about.

 

I get what you're saying, I just don't have time for the friends and family I already have. When it comes to commerce, I lije to keep it as impersonal as I can. Guess it comes from having spent too many years in retail management.

 

I feel bad for you OP, but this is a perfect example of why we have never done, and will never do "lists", because there's simply too much that can go wrong and end up creating situations like this. If you post the list in a high visibility area you'll still have customers complain that they didn't see the clipboard hanging on the wall. If you maintain a list behind the counter you have to rely on every single employee mentioning it to customers or someone will undoubtedly come in (like you) and get upset that the list was never mentioned to them. Also, there's very little profit margin in this business, and the follow up time involved in calling or emailing every single person on the list isn't worth the labor hours you're spending.

A perfect example of why I'll never allow lists was last year's BCBS; we knew how much we were supposed to receive, and could have started a list based on that, but the warehouse crew at the distributor did a shit job of loading and wrapping the pallet which resulted in one of the cases falling off and breaking when my driver was trying to unload it. If we had started a list I would have had to call the last X# of people on it and explain that due to someone else's incompetence I would be unable to sell them any bottles.

 

At the very least they should appologize and offer some way to make up for it in the future. When I am met with poor customer service I take my business else where regardless of the selection of products. Somewhere there is someone that would love to earn your business. Stick up for yourself as a consumer!

 

Although the store should probably have asked if he was on the list when they told him it arrives, I think it is a bit of a stretch to assume the OP was intentionally mislead. If this is much of a bottle shop, I find it hard to believe the store didn't tell him BCBS goes on sale on Black Friday the first time he asked.

 

Since you work in a bottle shop, don't you find it interesting no one mentioned it is available Black Friday despite the OP claiming he asked repeatedly?

 

I take that opinion from the followup from op stating the manager stated they did not get what they expected and some on the list would not get theirs. At that point I would think customer service would dictate to inform people before they make the trek if possible. In this case it was very possible at the time of phone contact. If the store knows everyone on the list will not get theirs then they should figure out how to handle it other than getting folks in the store then informing them. I am not 100% sure where you get intentionally misled from my post. Misled yes.... intentional...... who can know for sure. Intentionally misled may be a stretch, but certainly not out of the realm of possibility. At best they had no concern for their customers time. At worst it was intentionally misleading customers to get customers in the door.

 

Good point. They didn't tell him to come on Friday because they knew there was already a list, so that whole point was already in their heads? That's what I would guess.

Also to consider, not all retailers abide by that restriction, and some markets (like ours in AZ) receive BCBS shipments periodically during the year (more commonly kegs though).

 

If the manager was not the owner I would speak to the owner. If it is a chain I would contact the corporate office. If you were not then satisfied I would not go back.

 

Story just seems a little off... Would like to hear the other side.

 

Your driver should not drink and drive!

 

Like @Shroud0fdoom said, @Puigybank66 if you need / want some shoot me a message

 

Generally, I vote with my wallet, and I'll walk away from shitty service forever in a heartbeat, but given your lack of viable options,

... is probably the way to go.

 

I see you're from PA. Can I ask what bottle shop this was? Maybe someone will have a recommendation of another shop that you can make it to instead.

 

On Black Friday I got to a store at 7am for a 10am opening. First 12 people in line were supposed to get a Rare and me and my sister in law were 11th and 12th in line, fucking jackpot! We get inside and when I go to checkout they put 2 bottles of BCBS, 2 bottles of BCBBW, and 1 bottle of Regal in front of me and I said, I think you forgot the Rare. The response was, sorry we're out of rare. When I asked how that was even possible I was told that they made a mistake at another location (which opened at 8am) and promised 12 people in line that they would get a bottle of Rare but two of the bottles were taken by the owner and the guy that gave tickets didn't realize they only had 10 bottles to sell. Those two people bitched and they told the two of them to go to the location I was at and they would give them the bottles they were promised. I was not happy.

 

find a new shop

 

As others have said, it depends on your options and if you can get the same stuff elsewhere. I had the same crap happen to me. My issue is that I have no bottle shops close to me (45 minutes to Erie, PA or about an hour and change to Buffalo). I have a local grocery store and a gas station to get craft in town, so it's limited. We also get absolutely nothing as far as "hard to get stuff". The one thing that does come in is BCBS, so I look forward to it. Never had issues last year and snagged 4 packs, but this year I took black Friday off to go to the store and get some BCBS. No one really knows much about craft in our area so as I'm waiting there I'm asking employees and no one knows what it is. I finally saw a distributor and asked him and he said he heard the store was getting so many cases, but he doesn't deliver Goose Island and gave me the number for the one who does. I called them up and they said the cases wouldn't hit the store until Monday. I was upset since I wasted time, plus I worked Monday, but decided to go back. I'm told this time that it's in the back, but they'll only put out 1 case a day and that they already had that day and it was sold out and to come back on Tuesday. I was pretty pissed off by this point and then when I called Tuesday to ask before driving there I had three different people say they had never heard of it and the store didn't have any. LOL. To end this rant, I went back on Wednesday, spoke to someone very smart who knew all about it, and had them tell me that they had been putting out a case at a time all through the day all week and that it was now sold out. Had I spoken to them from day one I'd probably have been able to snag quite a bit of this, and not wasted time, but I work all day so it's hard to get there during morning hours. I was surprised that many people around town knew about BCBS, but I'm guessing it was just a couple of the same people continuing to come back and buy it all up. OP, I'm sorry about your situation, feel a little better knowing you aren't alone though.